Spring vacation meant a lot more for Bedford High School students than just hanging out with nothing to do.

Instead, some students spent three weekdays before April vacation traveling to Puerto Rico, watching Star Wars movies or turning metal trash barrels into smoker cookers.

Those were just a few of the activities that constituted intersession, a three-day period when students could attend special workshops on campus, participate in oneday excursions or go on longer overnight trips.

“It was fun, but it was organized, educational fun,” said Matthew McDonald, one of the teachers who stayed on campus during intersession.

Assistant Principal Bob Jozokos said intersession allows teachers to expand their instruction beyond the regular classroom.

“It gives you a chance to do academic activities that normally you wouldn’t get to do in the course of a class period,” he said. “You’ve got the whole day to really delve into something.”

The intersession trips took students everywhere from China and Puerto Rico to domestic urban settings such as New Orleans and New York City.

The longest and farthest trip was to China, where students observes a tai chi demonstration, visit Tiananmen Square, enter the Forbidden City and walk the Great Wall of China.

Each trip or activity had clear educational goals. Students were still graded, earning either a SP, for successful participation, or NP, for those who did not. Those grades will become part of a student’s permanent transcript.

In Puerto Rico, there were three goals: immersion in the local language and culture, study of history and language, and leadership and team-building skills.

These were mostly achieved outside of the classroom – in the only U.S. tropical rainforest, on a search for ancient Taino Indian petroglyphs or floating on a bioluminescent lagoon.

Activities in the urban U.S. destinations varied widely as well. In New Orleans, students teamed up with Habitat for Humanity to rebuild homes that had been under 20 feet of water. The itinerary for students in New York City, meanwhile, included three museums, a Broadway show, and tours of the United Nations headquarters, NBC and Grand Central Terminal.

Shorter day trips had students walking the Freedom Trail, snowshoeing through five feet of snow and T-shirt weather in the White Mountains, or tasting New England in three cities, Boston, Portsmouth and Portland.

The organizers of the three-city swing through New England said each stop offered students a snapshot of the local cultures. The experiences were built around a trip to one of the iconic restaurants in each city. “So they had a taste literally of each city,” said Sarah Loveland, an algebra teacher who organized the trip with her science colleague, Emily Blazek.

Students who did not go on trips, more than 200 freshmen and sophomores, spent Wednesday through Friday on campus.

But classes were not in session. Instead, students had their pick of about a dozen activities.

In one activity, titled “The View from the Front of the Class,” students learned what it is like to be a teacher. Others studied the science of Star Wars or the chemistry of cosmetics. Outdoors, students learned how to play unusual sports, such as disc golf, or tried out various international foods.

One group, led by humanities teachers Lori Dumaine and Andrew Mezeske, built smoker cookers. In Day 1, students split their time between building the cookers and acquainting themselves with process of cooking meat. The second day they went shopping at Bedford Prime Meats and Harvest Market. They devoted their final day to cooking.

Other than cooking, Mezeske said he hoped students learned something about the process of problem-solving.

He said the idea of building smoker cookers and students came to him in the fall. He said the cookers they made were based on a composite design he and a friend took from other models.

Mezeske said the activity was as experimental for the students as it was for him as a teacher. “That’s the beauty of intersession,” he said. “You try crazy things, see what works.”